The young woman got up. She walked a few steps in the studio, stopped before the sketches lying in a heap, examined one or two of them with an air of disgust.
“My God! Monsieur Lirat,” she said, “why do you persist in painting such ugly women, so comically shaped?”
“If I should tell you,” Lirat replied, “you would not understand it.”
“Thanks! … And when will you paint my portrait?”
“You should ask Monsieur Jacket or, better still, a photographer about that.”
“Monsieur Lirat?”
“Madame!”
“Do you know why I came?”
“To oblige me with your kindness, I suppose.”
“That’s in the first place! … And then?”
“We seem to be playing an innocent little game? That’s very nice.”
“To ask you to come to dine with me on Friday? Do you care to?”
“You are very kind, dear Madame, but on Friday that is just when it will be utterly impossible. That’s my day at the Institute.”
“Well, of all things! … Charles will be hurt by your refusal.”
“You will express my regrets to him, will you not?”
“Well, goodbye, Monsieur Lirat! A person can freeze to death here.”
And walking over to me, she gave me her hand.
“Monsieur Mintié. I am home every day, from five to seven! … I shall be delighted to see you … delighted. …”
I bowed and thanked her, and she went out leaving in my ears some of the music of her voice, in my eyes some of the kindliness of her look and in the studio the strong perfume of her hair, of her cape, of her muff, of her small handkerchief.
Lirat resumed his work without saying a word; I was turning over the pages of a book which I was not reading at all, and upon the moving pages there was flitting incessantly back and forth the image of the young visitor. I certainly was not asking myself what kind of an impression I had retained of her, nor whether I had retained any impression at all; but although she went out, she was not gone entirely. There was left with me an indefinite something of this short-lived apparition, something like a haze which assumed her form in which I could make out the shape of her head, the turn of the back of her neck, the movement of her shoulders, the graceful curve of her waistline, and that something haunted me. … I still beheld her in that chair which she had just left, unfathomable and more charming than ever, with her tender and luminous smile which radiated from her and created a halo of love about her.
“Who is that woman?” I suddenly asked, in a tone which I forced myself to render indifferent.
“What woman?” said Lirat.
“Why, the one that has just left.”
“Ah! Yes … my God! A woman just like others.”
“I should think so. … This does not tell me her name, however, nor who she is.”
Lirat was rummaging in his paint box. He answered carelessly:
“And so you want to know the name of that woman. … Strange curiosity! … Her name is Juliette Roux. … As for biographical information, the police can furnish you all you want, I imagine. … I presume that Juliette Roux gets up late, that she has her fortune told by cards, that she is deceiving and ruining as well as she can that poor Charles Malterre, an excellent chap whom you met here sometime ago, and whose mistress she is, for the time being. … Lastly, she is like other women, only with this difference, which makes her case worse: she is more beautiful than most of them and consequently more foolish and more malicious. … That sofa there, that you are sitting on … it was Charles who broke it by lying and crying on it for entire days, while telling me his troubles, you understand? One day he caught her with a croupier of a gambling club, on another day with a buffoon at the Bouffes theatre.
“There was also an affair with the wrestler of Neuilly, to whom she gave twenty francs and Charles’ old trousers. As you see, it’s full of idylls. … I like Malterre very much … because he is good-natured and his lack of sense evokes my pity. … He really has my sympathy. … But what can one say to such men, to whom love is the greatest thing in life and who can’t see a woman’s back without tacking on to it wings of dreams and sending it flying to the stars. … Nothing, isn’t that true? … So much so that the unfortunate fellow, in the midst of his rage and sobs, could brag about the fact that Juliette had received a good education. He used to take pride in the fact that she came from the womb of a physician’s wife and not from that of the wife of a janitor, and he would show me her letters, emphasizing the correct spelling and the elegant turn of phrases! … He seemed to say: ‘How I suffer, but how well written this is!’ … What a pity!”
“Ah! You, too, love the woman!” I exclaimed, when he finished his tirade.
And foolishly, I added:
“They say you have suffered much.”
Lirat shrugged his shoulders and smiled:
“You talk like Delauney, of the Comédie-Française. No, no, my kind friend, I have not suffered; I have seen others suffer, and that was enough for me … do you understand?”
Suddenly his voice became shrill, an almost cruel light shone in his eyes. He resumed:
“Ordinary people, poor devils like Charles Malterre, when stepped upon, are crushed, they disappear in the blood, in the mire, in the atrocious filth stirred up by woman’s hands … that’s unfortunate of course. … Humanity, however, does not claim them back; for nothing has been stolen from it. … But artists, men of our calibre with big hearts and big brains—when these are lost, strangled, killed! … You understand?”
His hand trembled, he crushed his crayon on the canvas.
“I have known three of them, three wonderful, divine ones; two died by hanging themselves; the third one, my teacher, is in a padded dark room at Bicêtre! … Of this pure genius there has been left only a lump
